Welcome to LawyerCastingTM, a new blog from eLawMarketing (edited by attorney/Internet marketer Joshua Fruchter) covering "best practices" in online marketing for lawyers and law firms, including websites, blogs, podcasts, webcasts, email marketing and much more!

Read the posts below and in our archives to learn all the latest tips and strategies for using the Internet to market your law firm and develop new business. Enjoy and prosper!

John Wanamaker, a retailing pioneer in the late 1800’s, was fond of saying, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.”

Today’s law firms face the same frustration. On the one hand, there are so many marketing and business development options to choose from:

Websites

Print advertising

Blogging/Social media

Email marketing

Webinars/Seminars

Tradeshows

A law firm can experiment with different initiatives at first, but given limited budgets, choices need to be made, and marketing dollars allocated towards those initiatives generating the greatest return – i.e., the “biggest bang for your buck.”

To put it differently, wouldn’t you rather invest money into marketing initiatives generating $2.50 in revenue for every $1 invested, versus those generating only 50 cents in revenue for every $1 invested?

Take blogging, for example. Many lawyers blog, but most can’t tell whether and how their efforts are translating into new business. Or consider: do you know how much new business your website bringing in? As compared to your email marketing? Or your webinars? Or your tradeshow attendance? Or your print advertising?

In short, to paraphrase Wanamaker, the trouble is, how does a law firm know which marketing dollars are being wasted, and which are bringing in new business?

The answer for law firms is “closed loop” marketing – a method of tying each new client back to the marketing initiative that persuaded the client to first contact the firm. So you’ll know which marketing initiatives are bringing in the most business most cost-effectively, and can allocate your marketing dollars more intelligently.

What technologies are available for “closed loop” marketing for law firms?

There's recently been opinions expressed online that ghostwriting lawyer blogs is unethical. My (this blog's editor's) initial response - "you've got be kidding!" Effectiveness may be debated (I think that clearly depends on the research and writing talent of the ghostwriter, the oversight of the attributed author, and the objective of the blog) -- but unethical??? I strongly beg to differ, and instead submit that ghostwriting lawyer blog posts is nothing more than a legitimate new twist on a time-honored tradition in the legal profession (mostly driven by the practical need to efficiently manage heavy workloads by delegating).*

For example, the New York Times has noted that the opinions of most federal appellate judges are written by their clerks. While the author of that article was disturbed by this fact (calling it a "crisis"), I highly doubt that anyone would seriously recommend censuring the majority of federal appellate judges for misconduct. To the contrary, federal appellate judges are highly respected and considered some of the brightest legal minds in the country; they didnt' secure their prestigious judgeships by being slouches.

We wanted to share the most recently computed average rates for key performance metrics for law firm email marketing campaigns in 2013 (based on the approximately 4.8 million emails sent by our law firm accounts during 2013).

Here's what we found for the first half of 2013 (i.e., emails sent by our law firm accounts between January 1, 2013, and June 30, 2013):

Average Open Rate: 19.37%

Average Clickthrough Rate: 2.88%

Average Conversion Rate: 14.85%

Average Bounce Rate: 2.98%

Average Unsubscribe Rate: 0.21%

And for the second half of 2013 (i.e., emails sent between July 1, 2013, and December 31, 2013):

When drafting copy for a website, law firms often tend to employ legal industry jargon that may be difficult for prospective clients to understand. They may also describe successes using terms of art that are not meaningful to site visitors. While writing clear and understandable website copy in plain English (using active verbs) can be challenging, investing the time to do so can pay dividends in terms of increased visitor engagement and better conversion of visits into leads.

The usability expects at Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) offer 3 essential guidelines for writing what they call "user-centric" website copy.

Salesforce.com is the #1 cloud-based CRM application in the world with a user community exceeding 1 million users. The core application is extended by hundreds of differents apps created by a large community of Salesforce developers to meet diverse functional needs.

While Salesforce has not made the same inroads into the legal community as it has in other industries, we see Salesforce as an exceptional tool for law firms and attorneys for practice management and marketing that law firm marketers and administrators should consider as an option when upgrading their firms' practice management and marketing functions.

For example, when managing cases and other matters, Salesforce enables attorneys to:

Track the status of key matter tasks, documents and deadlines with matter Dashboards

Running on Drupal, the website features a slideshow on the homepage with thumbnail navigation. Following SEO best practices to boost search engine visibility, all site URL's incorporate keywords, and the title and description tags for each page can be customized.

By now, everyone is familiar with the Healthcare.gov website debacle - the multiple glitches and technical defects that stymied the efforts of individuals to sign up for health insurance via the new federal online health insurance marketplace that launched on October 1, 2013, under the Affordable Care Act.

But what use is failure if we can't learn from it? To that end, the usability experts at Nielsen Norman Group have penned an article, entitled "HealthCare.gov’s Account Setup: 10 Broken Usability Guidelines," that walks through ten key usability guidelines that the Healthcare.gov website violated, and that should be avoided by other organizations launching new websites and other web applications.

First, what is a website "carousel" you might ask? Briefly, "carousels" are the navigable slideshows frequently displayed on law firm homepages through which visitors can scroll to learn more about a firm's practice areas, recent accomplishments, and/or other distinguishing qualities. Each frame of a carousel typically consists of a large bold image, a small amount of descriptive text, and a link to learn more about the subject of the frame. The key advantage of carousels is that they allow multiple pieces of content to simultaneously occupy prime real estate on a website homepage. Here's a link to an example we deployed for one client.

But the usability experts at Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) warn that carousels are a double-edged sword that can do more harm than good to a company's image if not properly designed. In a recent article entitled "Designing Effective Carousels: Create a Fanciful Amusement, Not a House of Horrors," Kara Pernice, Managing Director at NNG, cautions that, among other issues, the designer of a carousel may intend it as a collection of images that togther tell a story, whereas many visitors may only be focusing on the first frame without navigating further. However, the image and copy in that first frame, taken out of context, may give users the wrong idea about an organization.

To help companies design more effective carousels, Pernice offers up 7 best practices along with screenshots of sample carousels illustrating her points.

Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., is perhaps the leading guru on Web page usability, and so when his firm, the Nielsen Norman Group, criticizes certain approaches to website navigation, webmasters should pay heed.

Recently, Jen Cardello, a director at Nielsen Norman Group, published an article entitled, "Four Dangerous Navigation Approaches that Can Increase Cognitive Strain," that describes four different approaches to website navigation that cause mental strain and distress for site visitors, thereby causing them to become irritated and frustrated, and thus more likely to leave the site prematurely.

Nielsen illustrates each of these poor navigational approaches using "Before" and "After" case studies of companies that employed these approaches, and then fixed them with guidance from Nielsen's firm.

The firm recently launched the Massachusetts Tax Alert Blog. Running on WordPress, the blog will analyze recent Massachusetts and federal tax law developments. Among the plugins installed is one that helps the blog administrator manage the photos and bio links of the blog's multiple authors.

Ademi & O'Reilly is a leading securities class action law firm based in Wisconsin that represents classes of investors in securities fraud, mergers & acquisitions, and shareholder derivative litigation.

Running on Drupal, the firm's new website features a number of cutting edge features, including a "case" section detailing the firm's new investigations and cases, and ongoing and settled cases. Prospective clients can view the details of any case, and if applicable, complete and submit an online form to request representation. Upon submission, the prospective client's information is formatted into a PDF file suitable for filing with a court and forwarded via email to the attorney responsible for new case development.

For nearly 25 years, the Glancy firm has successfully prosecuted class action cases and complex litigation in federal and state courts throughout the country. The firm has recovered billions of dollars for investors, consumers, and entities injured by corporate wrongdoing.

Running on Drupal, the Glancy firm's new website features a number of cutting edge features, including sophisticated "case" pages that contain descriptions of cases that the firm is investigating or litigating, along with copies of related press releases, complaints and other documents, and embedded forms allowing investors to submit their trading history and other relevant information.

Ryan Ryan Deluca LLP is a litigation law firm with over a 50-year history in Connecticut focused on insurance and business-related litigation. The firm has tried hundreds of court and jury cases to conclusion – averaging 15 to 20 jury verdicts per year.

Running on Drupal, and employing a sleek, Web 2.0 look-and-feel, the website features a number of cutting edge features, including a navigable Javascript slideshow on the homepage with strong visuals highlighting the firm's various litigation specialties, and a regularly updating homepage with "deep links" to further details on recent firm news, successes and publications.

I had the pleasure of speaking last week on a panel presenting on "Growing Your Business Through Internet Marketing" at the 2012 Connecticut Bar Association Annual Meeting.

Among the other speakers on the panel was an employment lawyer, Scott Schaffer, who publishes an email newsletter, Workplace News, that is distributed to human resource professionals and other labor and employment attorneys. Scott shared many valuable tips on how he uses his email newsletter to generate new business.

One strategy that we repeatedly recommend to our own clients is to use your email newsletter or alert campaign "clickthrough" reports to generate leads. For example, if Scott sends his newsletter to 500 subscribers, and 100 subscribers open the email, and of those 100 subscribers, 25 subscribers click a link in the email to read a full article, Scott follows up with each of those 25 subscribers. The logic is that clicking on a link demonstrates interest, and so the subscribers with "clickthroughs" become Scott's "low hanging fruit" to see if he can convert that interest into new business.

But one tip I had never thought of before, but which makes great sense, is Scott's inclusion of links to various online resources within each issue of his newsletter - such as the full opinion of a case, or full text of a new regulation or law. Scott's thinking here is that if he includes a link to the actual text of the case, regulation or law he is discussing, subscribers will retain the email in their inbox (or move it to a folder) so they can easily access the link in the future. That is, Scott thinks in terms of providing his readers with access to online resources that they'll want to keep handy for future reference.

And lo and behold, Scott continues to see clickthroughs on links in his newsletter long after they were distributed. Now that's longevity in a day and age when emails are frequently deleted upon receipt.

In a nutshell, to increase the shelf life of your alerts and newsletters, include links to resources (even if they do not appear on your website) to which your readers will likely wish to refer back to in the future.